Any discussion of the background art throughout the specification should in no way be considered as an admission that such art is widely known or forms part of common general knowledge in the field.
DVM systems are widely used for surveillance purposes. In such contexts, it is important to collect evidence for the purpose of “incident recording”, that being recording relating to a particular “incident” (for example a break-in, altercation, emergency situation, or the like). For example, collecting of evidence is an extremely important aspect of incident management due to potential police involvement, subsequent legal proceedings, and training purposes. In known surveillance systems, evidence collection is generally achieved using a number of functionalities such as:                Automatic background recording on all cameras.        User or event driven recording on key cameras.        User initiated image snapshots.        
Conventionally, such functionalities are either pre-configured, or must be triggered manually by the operator during an incident. This can lead to costly configuration, and additional stress on operators in an already stressful situation. It can also require time consuming analysis after the event, where one or more operators must manually reconstruct the event, finding appropriate video regions, and ordering them based on time or, for example, movements of a suspect.
PCT patent application PCT/AU2012/000914 teaches approaches for controlling a DVM system thereby to automate incident-based recording. For example, one embodiment provides a method for controlling a DVM system, the method including: providing an incident trigger; in response to actuation of the incident trigger, defining an incident identifier; during a period of time for which the incident trigger is actuated, applying an incident recording protocol, thereby to automatically make recordings in accordance with the incident recording protocol; and associating each of the DVM recordings with the incident identifier. This allows a collection of “incident data” to be defined, comprising DVM data associated with the incident. This need not only be defined by video recordings; it may include snapshots and other data types.
Whilst PCT/AU2012/000914 is effective in collating incident data, there remain challenges in enabling a user to efficiently review that data.
There is a need in the art for improved systems and methods for managing video data.